The last voyage of the South Vietnamese Navy

I remembered reading about this back in the 1980's, I was studying the Vietnam war extensively since it was the most recent war we had been in and I know the effect that war had on my Dad and how it effected our family and how the war affected America and it took Desert Storm to get past the "Vietnam Syndrome".    I had recalled reading in one of the SOF magazines about the voyage to the Philippines to escape the fall of South Vietnam.  I still believe that we won the battles but lost the war at home due to the anti-war movement, the rules of engagements our troops had to deal with the artificial restrictions from the politicians and the yes men that inhabited the puzzle palace.  I have blogged extensively about the Vietnam war and I guess I am adding to the count.

The USS Kirk carried out one of the most significant humanitarian missions in U.S. military history. Yet the story went untold for 35 years. Correspondent Joseph Shapiro and producer Sandra Bartlett of NPR's Investigative Unit interviewed more than 20 American and Vietnamese eyewitnesses and participants in the events of late April and early May 1975. They studied hundreds of documents, photographs and other records, many never made public before — including cassette tapes recorded at the time by the ship's chief engineer.

Shapiro first learned of the Kirk from Jan Herman, historian of the U.S. Navy Medical Department, who says the Kirk's heroics got lost because, as the Vietnam War ended, Americans were bitterly divided over the war's course and cost. There was little interest in celebrating a mission that saved the lives of 20,000 to 30,000 refugees. Herman is working on a book documenting the story and a film documentary, which was shown when the Kirk crew met for a reunion in Springfield, Va., in July.

On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese troops entered the deserted streets of Saigon. Tanks crashed through the gates of the presidential palace and soldiers hoisted the yellow and red flag of the Viet Cong.

Just hours before, the last Americans had been evacuated, rescued and flown on Marine helicopters to U.S. Navy aircraft carriers waiting off the coast.

The Vietnam War was officially over. Now those Navy ships were steaming away from Vietnam.

There was one exception. That night, the captain of a small destroyer escort, the USS Kirk, got a mysterious order to head back to Vietnam.

Paul Jacobs, the captain, received the directive from Adm. Donald Whitmire, commander of the evacuation mission — Operation Frequent Wind. He was aboard the USS Blue Ridge, the lead ship of the Navy's 7th Fleet.

The Kirk reached Con Son Island, off the southern coast of Vietnam, on May 1, 1975. There, it was met by 30 South Vietnamese navy ships and dozens of fishing boats and cargo ships — and as many as 30,000 Vietnamese refugees. Hugh Doyle

Jacobs recalls Whitmire's surprise message: "He says, 'We're going to have to send you back to rescue the Vietnamese navy. We forgot 'em. And if we don't get them or any part of them, they're all probably going to be killed.'"

The Kirk was being sent to an island off the Vietnamese mainland — by itself. And there was one more odd thing, the admiral told Jacobs: He'd be taking orders from a civilian.

Richard Armitage came aboard the Kirk late at night, wearing a borrowed sport coat. Years later, Armitage would become second in command to Colin Powell in the Bush administration's State Department. But on that last day of April 1975, he was on a special assignment from the secretary of defense. He'd just turned 30 that week.

Armitage recalls coming aboard the ship and quickly being escorted to the officer's mess where he met with Jacobs and Commodore Donald Roane, commander of the flotilla of Navy destroyers.

"Commodore Roane said something like, 'Young man, I'm not used to having strange civilians come aboard my ship in the middle of the night and give me orders,' " Armitage recalls. "I said, 'I am equally unaccustomed, sir, to coming aboard strange ships in the middle of the night and giving you orders. But steam to Con Son.' And so they did."

The Kirk and its crew of about 260 officers and men were ordered to Con Son Island, about 50 miles off the coast of South Vietnam and not yet occupied by the North Vietnamese. Con Son was the site of a notorious prison. Now, its harbors were the hiding place for the remnants of the South Vietnamese navy.

Armitage had come up with the plan for them to gather there.

Armitage, a graduate of Annapolis, had been a Navy intelligence officer, assigned to Vietnamese units. He gained respect for the South Vietnamese as he worked alongside them and became fluent in the language. Then he resigned his commission and left the Navy in protest when the Nixon administration signed the Paris peace accords. That 1973 agreement between all warring parties in Vietnam ended direct U.S. military involvement in the war. Armitage felt the U.S. had sold out the South Vietnamese.

But as it became clear that the South Vietnam government was about to fall, a Pentagon official asked Armitage to fly back to Vietnam with a dangerous mission. His assignment: to remove or destroy naval vessels and technology so they wouldn't fall into the hands of the Communists.

In 1975, Richard Armitage was a 30-year-old civilian charged with a dangerous mission: to remove or destroy South Vietnamese naval vessels and technology so they wouldn't fall into the hands of the Communists. Later, Armitage would serve as deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005, under Secretary of State Colin Powell in the administration of George W. Bush.  Courtesy Richard Armitage

A few weeks before Saigon fell, Armitage had shown up at the office of an old friend, Capt. Kiem Do, deputy chief of staff for the South Vietnamese navy. Together, they came up with the secret plan to rescue the Vietnamese ships when — as was becoming clear would happen — the South Vietnamese government surrendered.

Do remembers warning Armitage that they'd be saving more than ships.

"I told him, I said, 'Well, our crew would not leave Saigon without their family, so therefore there will be a lot of people,' " Do recalls.

He says Armitage remained silent. "He didn't say yes; didn't say no. So I just take it as an acknowledgement," Do says.

Armitage didn't tell his bosses at the Pentagon there would be refugees on those ships. He feared the American authorities wouldn't want them.

Neither Do nor Armitage, though, could predict how many refugees would turn up in Con Son.

The Kirk steamed through the night to Con Son and reached the island just as the sun came up on May 1. There were 30 South Vietnamese navy ships, and dozens of fishing boats and cargo ships. All of them were packed with refugees, desperate to get out of Vietnam.

A boat brings Vietnamese refugees to the Kirk near Con Son Island. The U.S. ship undertook one of the greatest humanitarian missions in the history of the U.S. military.  Hugh Doyle

The ships "were crammed full of people," says Kent Chipman, who in 1975 was a 21-year-old machinist's mate in the ship's engine room and today works at a water purification plant in Texas. "I couldn't see below deck, but above deck the people were just as tight as you could get, side by side."

There was no exact count of how many people were on those ships. Some historical records say there were 20,000 people. Other records suggest it was as many as 30,000. Jan Herman, a historian with the U.S. Navy Medical Department, who is documenting the story of the Kirk, uses the higher number.

"They were rusty, ugly, beat up," says Chipman. "Some of them wouldn't even get under way; they were towing each other. And some of them were actually taking on water and we took our guys over and got the ones under way that would run."

One cargo ship was so heavy it was sinking. People below deck were bailing out the water with their shoes.

Stephen Burwinkel, the Kirk's medic — in the Navy known as a hospital corpsman — boarded that ship to check on the sick and injured. He saw a Vietnamese army lieutenant helping passengers leave the sinking ship, crossing to another ship, over a narrow wooden plank. As people pushed to get off the sinking ship, one man knocked a woman who stopped in front of him. She fell off the plank and into the ocean.

The woman was quickly rescued. But Burwinkel worried that the others on the ship would panic. He says the lieutenant acted quickly.

"This Vietnamese lieutenant did not hesitate, he went right up the back of that guy, took his gun out and shot him in the head, killed him, kicked him over the side. Stopped all the trouble right then and there," Burwinkel recalls. The shooting was shocking, he says, but it very likely prevented a riot.

After fixing what could be fixed on the seaworthy vessels and transferring people from the ships that would be left behind, the Kirk led the flotilla of naval ships, fishing boats and cargo ships toward the Philippines.

The USS Cook, another destroyer escort, like the Kirk, helped out as the ships were leaving Con Son. The Cook's crew provided rice, and its corpsman helped Burwinkel and his assistant from the Kirk attend to the sick and injured, too.

As the flotilla headed out to sea, on the way to the Philippines, other Navy ships came in and out of the escort, according to Herman. Among those other ships were the USS Mobile, USS Tuscaloosa, USS Barbour County, USS Deliver and USS Abnaki.

But it's clear from the daily logs from the Kirk and the other ships that the crew of the Kirk took the lead.

"For me, the Kirk was ideal," says Armitage, who moved from the Kirk to the Vietnamese navy's flagship. "It could communicate with the rest of the U.S. fleet. They would go with us across to the Philippines and would be able to rescue any of the folks who might be in harm's way. Some had been wounded. Some were pregnant. All were sick after a while. And we needed a way to take care of those folks."

The Kirk's sailors kept busy providing food, water and medicine to people on the South Vietnamese ships.

The South Vietnamese fleet follows the USS Kirk to Subic Bay in the Philippines. The Kirk's final mission at the end of the Vietnam War was to bring the remnants of the South's navy to safety in the Philippines.  Hugh Doyle

Burwinkel spent his time moving from ship to ship treating the sick and injured. With thousands of people — many of them babies and children — he had to work almost nonstop.

"When they gave me the meritorious service medal over all this, I quite frankly referred to it as my 'no-sleep' medal," says Burwinkel, who made a career in the Navy and is now retired and living in Pensacola, Fla. "I would go out there and do my thing and at dark we would come back to the Kirk and try to get a little bit to eat and make some rounds — gather my wits about me, resupply myself and get ready for the next day."

Last Sovereign Territory Of The Republic Of Vietnam'

Of the some 30,000 refugees on vessels escorted by the Kirk over six days, only three died.

But as the flotilla approached the Philippines, the Kirk's captain got some bad news. The presence of South Vietnamese vessels in a Philippine port would present the government in Manila with a diplomatic predicament.

The Philippine government wasn't going to allow us in, period, because these ships belonged to the North Vietnamese now and they didn't want to offend the new country," Jacobs, the captain, recalls.

The government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was one of the first to recognize the Communist rulers now in control of a single Vietnam, and Jacobs was told the ships should go back.

Armitage and his South Vietnamese friend, Capt. Do, came up with a solution that Marcos had to accept.

Do recalls the plan: "We will raise the American flag and lower the Vietnamese flag as a sign of transfer [of] the ship back to the United States, because during the war those ships are given to the Vietnamese government as a loan, if you want, from the United States, to fight the Communists. Now the war is over, we turn them back to the United States."

There was a frantic search to find 30 American flags. Two officers from the Kirk were sent aboard each Vietnamese ship to take command after a formal flag ceremony.

Rick Sautter was one of the Kirk officers who took command of a Vietnamese ship.

"That was the last vestige of South Vietnam. And when those flags came down and the American flags went up, that was it. Because a Navy ship is sovereign territory and so that was the last sovereign territory of the Republic of Vietnam," he says.

"Thousands and thousands of people on the boats start to sing the [South Vietnamese] national anthem. When they lower the flag, they cry, cry, cry," Do remembers.

On May 7, the ships flying American flags were allowed into Subic Bay.

For the refugees, it was just the beginning of their long journey, which took them to Guam and then resettlement in the United States.

For the sailors of the Kirk, ending the Vietnam War by rescuing 20,000 to 30,000 people was very satisfying.

"This was the high point of my career and I'm very proud of what we did, what we accomplished, how we did it," Jacobs says. "I felt like we handled it truly professionally and that was kind of a dark time."

Armitage says he "envied" the officers and men of the USS Kirk. The ship had not seen combat on its tour to Vietnam. But it ended with the rescue of tens of thousands of refugees, one of the greatest humanitarian missions in the history of the U.S. military.

Says Armitage: "They weren't burdened with the former misadventure of Vietnam."

This article originally appeared on NPR.org, September 1, 2010 by Joseph Shapiro & Sandra Bartlett.  Here's the original link to this story:

https://www.npr.org/2010/09/01/129578263/at-war-s-end-u-s-ship-rescued-south-vietnam-s-navy

 List of ships that were in the South Vietnamese Navy

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Why The United States had to Ditch Helicopters during the withdrawal from Saigon in 1975.

I had gotten an email or a comment about a Blogpost I did back in 2014 about the C-130 that flew with 432 people in it.  I had also done a post on the last voyage of the South Vietnamese Navy.  It to this day still bothers me, because we were suppose to support them after the Paris Peace Accord but Richard Nixon who was president in 1973 who guaranteed the support was gone by 1975 due to Watergate and Gerald Ford was President.  President Ford couldn't get anything through Congress that was full of antiwar democrats, the antiwar hippies that were spitting on the GI's and calling them "Babykillers"  from the 1960's moved into the halls of congress in the 1970's.  Gerald Ford had burned whatever little political capital he had pardoning Richard Nixon, what was the right thing to do to close that chapter of the country, but the antiwar democrats still wanted blood so they killed any aid for the South that needed to rebuild their stocks after the War.  And in 1975 North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in a conventional military invasion. And the Antiwar Donks got another feather in their cap because they supported the north anyway and were glad to see the south fall.

One of the most iconic images from the fall of Saigon did not happen in Saigon. It happened at sea where sailors pushed helicopters off their ships. They did so, due to the stubbornness of an incompetent diplomat.

The US began withdrawing troops from South Vietnam in 1973 with a final deadline of 1976. By 1974, however, President Gerald Ford realized they had a problem. Any South Vietnamese who had served the Americans would be targeted by the North Vietnamese when they took over. It was known the South would fall once the US left.

In April 1975 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger received a list of about 1.6 million at-risk people who needed to get out of Vietnam. Excluding Americans, their dependents, and other nationalities who worked for the American government, that left about 600,000 South Vietnamese.

Plans to evacuate the former had been ongoing for years and by the start of 1975, the military was ready to evacuate 8,000 of them.

As they could not possibly take 600,000 people out, the South Vietnamese allocation was lowered to 17,000; those who worked for the US Embassy, plus seven dependents each. Then they took a closer look at the embassy payroll and found the number was nearer 200,000. In the end, however, it did not matter

A South Vietnamese helicopter that ferried two South Vietnamese officers, a woman, and two children being pushed off the USS Okinawa to make room for more arriving choppers in April 1975.

By March 1975, the North Vietnamese were in South Vietnam. On April 1, the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps began camping out in Saigon’s Defense Attaché Office (DAO) compound to prepare for the evacuation. That was the signal for other embassies to get their citizens out. News agencies began ordering their reporters to leave, as did the CIA. One man, however, said no.

Graham Anderson Martin had been the American Ambassador to South Vietnam since 1973. Despite the advancing North Vietnamese, he was convinced that superior American firepower would deter them. Nor did Martin want people to think the US would run. He ordered his staff to stay put. Brigadier General Richard E. Carey, the Commander of the 9^th Marine Amphibious Brigade, went to Vietnam on April 13 to reason with Martin – but it did no good.

Americans were told to stay tuned to the Armed Forces Radio. When they heard Bing Crosby’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” they had to get to the evacuation centers ASAP!

The attack on the Tan Son Nhut airfield in Saigon by a South Vietnamese defector hoping to curry favor with the advancing North Vietnamese Army 

Martin held to his convictions until April 28 when the North Vietnamese surrounded Saigon. At 6 PM that evening they bombed the Tan Son Nhut Air Base; right next to the airport. There would be no evacuations by plane – the preferred method as it was the easiest.

Martin had his wife flown out but still insisted the US Embassy staff stay at their posts; except those who had to escort his wife.

The following morning at 7, Defense Attaché Major General Homer D. Smith pleaded with the Ambassador to give the evacuation signal for Operation Frequent Wind; the new name for Operation Talon Vise. Martin refused, demanding to see the air base. Finally seeing little of it was left, he, at last, gave the go-ahead.

“White Christmas” was played on the radio, but it was too late. Thousands of panicked South Vietnamese had jammed the streets to flee further south. Others clogged foreign embassies pleading for last-minute visas. Buses and cars carrying Americans or other Caucasians were mobbed as they were stuck in traffic.

Americans who did get to either the US Embassy or to the DAO compound found the gates shut to stop the tide of panicked Vietnamese trying to get in. With no planes available, there was only one way out – military choppers.

These took evacuees from both compounds out to sea where American warships were waiting. Escorting those choppers were AH-1J SeaCobra Helicopter gunships and other such nasties in case the North Vietnamese tried to shoot them down. They need not have bothered – the North Vietnamese wanted them gone.

For the next 18 hours, 81 overloaded and crammed helicopters piloted by exhausted men ferried people out to the ships regardless of whether they were on the approved list or not. They were not the only ones.

Members of the South Vietnamese military who could fly had similar ideas. Major Ba Van Nguyen had a wife and three kids. None spoke English or had a US visa, but as he served South Vietnam, they were all in trouble

Location of US Navy ships in the South China Sea during Operation Frequent Wind

Nguyen stole a CH-47 Chinook helicopter from his base, flew to his neighborhood, and ordered his family and neighbors to get in. Unable to understand what the Americans were saying on the radio, and knowing the DAO and American Embassy compounds were busy, he took a gamble.

He flew toward the South China Sea. The gamble paid off when he spotted the USS Kirk, but as he approached, the crew on deck waved him away – his chopper was too big. If he tried to land, the rotors would destroy the upper deck and hurt or kill people.

Nguyen hovered over the ship and using sign language, begged the shocked sailors to catch his passengers. Then he flew out to sea, jumped out of his chopper, and hoped a boat would rescue him. One did.

A VNAF Cessna o-1 plane flew over the USS Midway and dropped a note: “Can you move these helicopter [sic] to the other side, I can land on your runway, I can fly 1 hour more, we have enough time to move. Please rescue me. Major Buang, Wife and 5 child

You can read about the Landing here

South Vietnamese refugees landing on a US Navy ship during Operation Frequent Wind

Buang was the first person to land a VNAF on a carrier; several choppers having been shoved into the sea. A second followed several hours later.

As more Vietnamese helicopters arrived, the decks on all the ships became full. The servicemen knew what awaited the passengers if they stayed behind. There was only one solution.

Dump more choppers overboard. Several 45 UH-1 Hueys (worth about $10 million) and at least one other CH-47 Chinook ended up in watery graves, as a result.

By the end of Operation Frequent Wind on April 30, some 7,000 people were saved at the cost of two pilots. Thousands more were left behind including Americans who had heard Bing Crosby’s song too late.

The North Vietnamese Army 1972 Easter Offensive.

 

                               ARVN Soldiers from their 1st infantry Division on top of a destroyed North       Vietnamese T59 Tank.  They are from their 20th tank Regiment.

   I ran across this  article on "Cherriewriters" a blog about Vietnam and I liked the article.  I am researching another article and will publishing it soon.

Thirteen years after the North Vietnamese government’s Resolution 15, in January 1959, set in motion the armed struggle to conquer South Vietnam, North Vietnamese Army (NVA) General Vo Nguyen Giap believed he had found the elusive ‘center of gravity’ he had been searching for. Four years earlier, with the Tet Offensive of 1968, he had thought it was the relationship between the South Vietnamese people and their government. But the ‘Great General Uprising’ he had counted on never materialized, and his Viet Cong (VC) guerrilla auxiliaries were annihilated in the process.

But this time it would be different. Since that debacle, the United States had begun a process of what it called ‘Vietnamization’ — i.e., turning the war over to a rearmed and equipped South Vietnamese military while the Americans gradually withdrew. Beginning in 1969, U.S. Army and Marine combat divisions began leaving Vietnam. By 1970, both Marine divisions had departed, and by 1972 American in-country strength had fallen from a peak of 550,000 to some 75,000. The only U.S. Army ground combat units left in Vietnam were the 196th Light Infantry Brigade and the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). U.S. Air Force and naval units had been drawn down as well.

It appeared that a classic center of gravity had been created — the relationship between South Vietnam and its American ally. Not only had the majority of U.S. military forces been withdrawn but American congressional and public opinion had shifted dramatically against the war, and the chance of U.S. reintervention appeared to be nil. All that remained was for the NVA to administer the coup de grace.

And that’s what their Operation Nguyen Hue was designed to do. Better known as the ‘Eastertide Offensive,’ it dropped all pretense of guerrilla war. Instead, it was a three-pronged multidivision NVA cross-border invasion, well supported by tanks and heavy artillery. General Giap committed six NVA divisions to the attack in I Corps in the northern portion of South Vietnam. Another three NVA divisions were ordered to strike in II Corps in central South Vietnam, and yet another NVA/VC three-division force would attack in III Corps north of Saigon.

By the second day of Nguyen Hue, the situation along the DMZ was critical. The general confusion and the tendency of the ARVN field commanders to downplay their bad fortune led both South Vietnamese and U.S. senior military officials in Saigon initially to dismiss the invasion across the DMZ as a diversionary attack and to believe that the real thrust of the anticipated North Vietnamese offensive would occur in the Central Highlands farther south.

 

The lack of South Vietnamese aggressiveness up to this point produced a lull on the battlefield, allowing the NVA to reorganize their forces and replace the heavy losses they had sustained from U.S. airstrikes. The NVA took advantage of the bad flying weather to strike when tactical airpower would be least effective. Following an artillery and mortar barrage, the North Vietnamese took Dong Ha on April 28, forcing the South Vietnamese defenders to retreat into the Quang Tri citadel. There, the ARVN continued their defensive actions while airmen took advantage of clearing skies to mount concentrated airstrikes — as many as 200 sorties per day.

The next day, the equivalent of four NVA divisions mounted their final advance on Quang Tri. In the face of massive artillery attacks (over 4,500 rounds fell on the city in one day) and tank-supported infantry attacks, the South Vietnamese defenders broke and ran, leaving substantial quantities of weapons and supplies intact. The green 56th Regiment surrendered to the Communists, forcing its two American advisers to make their escape by helicopter.

While allied tactical air pounded the NVA positions to great effect, the South Vietnamese forces, led by a proven commander, General Ngo Quang Troung, reorganized around Hue and launched several successful spoiling attacks against Communist forces poised to move on the old capital city. The North Vietnamese did make several drives on Hue in later May, the most notable taking place on May 29, but it failed when the South Vietnamese, though outnumbered, pushed the North Vietnamese back across the Perfume River. Unable to take Hue, and reeling under the destructive weight of U.S. B-52 strikes, the North Vietnamese withdrew from their position in northern South Vietnam. On June 28, Troung’s forces advanced north and fought to take Quang Tri.

Meanwhile, the NVA had launched the second effort of their battle plan in II Corps in the Central Highlands. The NVA 320th Division, supported by tanks and anti-aircraft weapons, swept across the Laotian border and advanced on the city of Kontum, badly mauling the 22nd ARVN Division in the process. The 22nd Division was split between the Highlands and the coast, where it still had area security missions and was more or less chopped up in detail (i.e., defeated one unit at a time).

The first major drive on Kontum itself occurred on the morning of May 14. Battalion-sized units of NVA soldiers supported by two columns of tanks attacked from the north and northwest. South Vietnamese defenders, using hand-held anti-tank weapons and supported by fighter-bombers, were able to deal with the tanks and held their ground. Similar attacks were launched and subsequently broken up by the Kontum defenders and by U.S. and South Vietnamese air power over the next several days. Of particular help against the North Vietnamese tanks was the introduction of the TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided) anti-tank missile. These missiles, launched from U.S. Army helicopters and guided to their targets by the pilots, gave the allies a great advantage by being able to pick off the NVA tanks as they moved in to attack. Of the first 101 firings, 89 scored direct hits on enemy tanks and trucks. Through June 12, the U.S. Army claimed 26 tank kills by the helicopter-launched missiles, including at least 11 T-54s in the Kontum area.

The third prong of the NVA attack began on April 2, as the enemy 5th Division, composed of both Viet Cong and NVA units, rolled into northern Tay Ninh province in III Corps and attacked the fire support base at Lac Long. Within two days the Communists had effective control of key positions in the province and were able to direct their attention to their main objectives, the towns and airfields in Loc Ninh, An Loc and Quan Loi, along with positions astride Highway 13, the main highway connecting the region with Saigon. As elsewhere, the Communists? main objectives were to establish a regional government and to better position themselves for subsequent ‘peace’ talks. The city of Loc Ninh, located close to the Cambodian border, fell within a couple of days and subsequently became the capital of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRGSVN), a distinction it held until it was disbanded by the North Vietnamese after the war.

Supported by U.S. B-52 airstrikes and U.S. and South Vietnamese tactical airstrikes, the defenders at An Loc were able to hold out as American air power effectively broke up the NVA troop concentrations around the city. A captured letter, handwritten by the political commissar of the NVA’s 9th Division to his higher headquarters, reported that the allied tactical air and B-52 strikes had been unbelievably devastating. Finally, the Communist forces lifted their siege on July 11 and withdrew to their base areas in Cambodia.

For the United States, and especially for President Richard Nixon, the invasion could not have come at a worse time. Enjoying foreign policy successes abroad but a shaky economy at home, the president would just as soon not have had to deal with the Vietnam issue. Politically, as General Giap had foreseen, it was impossible to reintroduce sufficient U.S. combat troops to stem the NVA drive. The major U.S. contribution to the South Vietnamese effort, besides political and materiel support, would be fire support in the form of naval gunfire from U.S ships off the Vietnamese coast and, most important, airpower.

The diminishing U.S. role in the Vietnam War during this period of Vietnamization had left U.S. air assets at a fraction of their past strength in Southeast Asia. Before the offensive started, three squadrons of F-4 fighter-bombers and a single squadron of A-37 attack aircraft made up the U.S. Air Force’s presence in Vietnam, a total of 76 planes. United States Navy and Marine aviation assets located in-country and off the coast of Vietnam augmented this total.

With his reputation and his policy of Vietnamization at stake, Nixon implemented a massive buildup of airpower in Southeast Asia and a broadening of the eligible targets. On April 6, U.S. fighter-bombers raided military targets 100 kilometers north of the demilitarized zone. As the available air assets made their strikes both in support of the beleaguered ARVN units and against targets in North Vietnam, squadrons of U.S. military aircraft redeployed from their bases in Japan, Korea, the Philippines and the U.S. mainland. Simultaneously, more aircraft carriers steamed toward Vietnam to join the two already on station there, until by late spring there were six aircraft carriers, each with approximately 90 craft, operating off the coast.

U.S. tactical airpower was stemming the tide of the Communist invasion, but it was not turning it back. While the ARVN ground forces were holding, they were in no shape to drive the NVA from South Vietnam. If the United States was going to stop North Vietnam, it would have to greatly increase its pressure. Instead of concentrating on the tactical situation on the battlefield, the United States would have to hit the North on a strategic scale.

I

Cutting rail and communication lines and interdicting land-based supplies was accomplished to much greater effect than during attempts earlier in the war. This was due mainly to the introduction of precision-guided munitions, commonly referred to in the press as smart bombs.’ These weapons, dropped from aircraft and then guided to their target by the pilot using either television or lasers, allowed a pinpoint accuracy never before enjoyed on the battlefield. Key targets previously restricted because of their proximity to foreign borders or civilian areas could now be attacked.

The Soviet-built Lang Chi hydroelectric plant, located 63 miles northwest of Hanoi on the Red River, was capable of supplying up to 75 percent of Hanoi’s electricity, but breaching its dam could drown as many as 23,000 civilians. On June 10, F-4 laser bombers put 12 Mk .84s through the 50-by-100-foot roof of the main building, destroying the plant’s turbines and generators without putting a crack in the dam.

Stiff South Vietnamese defenses at An Loc and Kontum, a spirited counterattack around Quang Tri, and the crippling effect of U.S. airpower brought the offensive to a standstill by early summer. The North Vietnamese abandoned their sieges of Kontum and An Loc by mid-June. In September, South Vietnamese forces were able to recapture the remnants of the city of Quang Tri from a token Communist force. In the end, the North Vietnamese forces were able to hold on to only two district towns, Loc Ninh and Dong Ha.

The invasion of 1972 saw the first enemy use of massed armor coordinated with infantry and artillery in a fashion that the American generals, trained in European-style mechanized warfare, would be quite familiar with. In fact, the overt invasion by the North proved to be the opportunity that American military and planners had long dreamed of: to lure the elusive Communists into the open in a conventional, setpiece battle. Only in this type of conflict could the United States’ huge advantage in firepower and mobility be effectively exploited.

The North Vietnamese had a big battlefield edge over the South because of their artillery. The North Vietnamese deployed three regiments of artillery totaling several hundred guns to go along with the equivalent of two tank regiments and 17 infantry regiments. The Soviet-made 130mm cannon could do much damage. It had an effective standoff range of 27,500 meters and could outgun practically every artillery piece in both the U.S. and U.S.-equipped South Vietnamese armies.

In terms of equipment, the South Vietnamese were equivalent, if in some areas not superior, to their brothers in the North. The major problem that ARVN suffered from was leadership, especially at the higher levels. Too often during the battle, as well as throughout the war, the battalion, regimental and divisional commanders suffered from indecision at crucial moments. The field commanders also exhibited a lack of aggressiveness and initiative on the battlefield, preferring to let U.S. and South Vietnamese air power take on enemy forces rather than engage them themselves.

The Vietnamese extreme concern with saving face’ also contributed to their unwillingness to take chances or to take personal responsibility for their actions. This belief probably contributed to the early successes of the North Vietnamese since the ARVN leadership was reluctant to report the reality of the situation.

This poor leadership translated directly into poor morale among the front-line soldiers who would have to fight and die if the South Vietnamese forces would turn back the invaders. Despite that disadvantage, however, in the end the ARVN, encouraged by the presence of U.S. air support, held.

As the offensive petered out, the North Vietnam government and military had to take stock of what their effort had won them and what it had cost them. Analysts estimate that between 50,000 and 75,000 NVA died as a result of Operation Nguyen Hue. Many more were wounded, and massive materiel losses included more than 700 tanks.  The ARVN suffered~10,000 killed, 33,000 wounded, and 3,500 missing.